First Name | Paul |
---|---|
Last Name | Suckow |
Email Address | paul.suckow@gmail.com |
Affiliation | Harris County CSD Senior Planner |
Subject | Enact real climate protection, take the lead! |
Comment | Public Comment to California EPA Air Resources Board 12/14/2010: "Cap and trade" has been demonstrated to work in the Montreal Protocol to reduce upper atmosphere ozone destruction, thus becoming our only model for an effective international agreement that can reliably reduce a dangerous global pollutant. However, I want you to think outside the box because the future imposed by unbridled global heating is too terrible to properly imagine and our ability to control it is rapidly dissipating. Please consider implementing an assured carbon tax, perhaps along with the nation of China or the entire Pacific Rim, on all carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The United States of America and Canada will have no choice but to go along, which is what they want and need. To be sure there are no loopholes in responsibility, call it a carbon fee or assessment across the board. James Hansen's private communications urging a carbon fee to be fully returned to the public are particularly compelling, at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/. I’ve attached a zipped file of the most pertinent examples to this comment. If you experience further principled opposition to cap and trade without giveaways as a mechanism to control future climate change, please consider this surer way to establish a price on carbon emissions: an actual carbon fee imposed at the port of entry or domestic mine/wellhead on all anthropogenic sources of atmospheric greenhouse gases rising to commensurate with very real future social costs. This fee can start out small but effective, and grow according to an entirely predictable schedule over the next few decades. Thereafter a carbon fee can adaptively regulate carbon emissions and perhaps even incentivize atmospheric carbon reduction over the next two centuries. We should establish some control over the destiny of life as we know it, just as the Fed helps to regulate the gyrations of our expansionist economy. Popular opinion shifted by 2007 to support real, systemic action against climate change. Business has been asking for stable expectations for the future, with of all companies Royal Dutch Shell requesting government action since their shareholder statement of 2006. Even the Houston Area Survey (http://has.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=2452, http://has.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/2009_Findings/HAS_Highlights_2010.pdf) has shown majority support, right here in the Oil capital of the planet. Any failure to act to conserve a livable climate after 2007 is the policy maker’s alone. Clearly, going forward we cannot expect initiative from our U.S. Congress, and certainly not without your solid supporting performance in California. Act in the best way possible by implementing a steadily rising carbon fee sufficient to ratchet down atmospheric carbon emissions to zero and below… and return all the revenue collected per capita directly to the people, so that their enlightened consumer actions in the free market can guide us to a better future than the one we veer toward today. Respectfully, Paul M. Suckow Senior Planner, Harris County CSD, Texas |
Attachment | www.arb.ca.gov/lists/capandtrade10/918-comment_to_california_air_board_12-14-2010.doc |
Original File Name | Comment to California Air Board 12-14-2010.doc |
Date and Time Comment Was Submitted | 2010-12-14 08:43:14 |
If you have any questions or comments please contact Clerk of the Board at (916) 322-5594.